A Delicate Subject
by Opus the Penguin
Summary: Updated, because someone had to do it eventually. Ken's travails continue, although at least he's artistic about it.
1. A Delicate Subject

There were days when Ken really appreciated his work in the flower shop. Some days, just some days, the dangers isolation, woes, and, last but not least, the intense cognitive dissonance of being an assassin just seemed to melt away after a few hours of gardening and flower arranging. It was easy to get lost in his own disguise and briefly believe that he truly had a normal life. It was those few, all too brief hours of contentedness than Ken cherished more than anything. Unfortunately, today was not one of those relaxing days. Today, he was working with Omi. Alone.  
Ken bit his lip as he stole a glance at the younger boy. Omi was humming cheerily to himself, fiddling happily with a pot of azaleas. As usual, Omi's shorts were too short and his summer vest was revealing a tawny band of skin all the way around his abdomen. Omi caught Ken's gaze (he always caught Ken's gaze) and smiled. Ken looked away.  
There was a series of loud thuds as the pack of girls who always swarmed through the flower shop crushed against the front picture window. There must have been two dozen of them out on the street, keeping a hormonal vigil over the two young men even after the store was closed. That's not without its creepy side, Ken though to himself. He knew there were rumors. Lots of rumors. And notebooks full of stories circulating at the local high school. Not to mention the drawings. And the photoshopped pictures. Ken was pretty sure he'd heard about at least one poem too. And who could possibly forget the questionably animated Flash! cartoon on that one website?  
It was times like this when Ken really wished the flower shop had blinds, preferably metal ones. He could feel all the eyes on him and it gave him goosebumps. It's like all those girls expected them to put on some sort of show. He chanced another look at Omi, only to find him cheerfully singing a Morning Musume song to himself and shaking his ass. Before that image had even processed fully, Ken winced. The nanosecond of partial attention he had paid to Omi's wiggling hindquarters sparked a roar of chatter from the crowd outside. Somehow Ken's well-trained ears picked out "See? I told you so" out of the din.  
That was the last straw. Ken stood the his fists clinched, trying to work up the nerve to do what he needed to do. It was time to have the talk with Omi. The talk Ken had been dreading for weeks now. Even now he didn't really feel like he was ready for it, but it needed to be done. There were some things he needed to get out in the open. It was finally time to be honest with his younger colleague about the way he felt about him. The tiny sliver of time as he turned to face Omi was the most excruciating thing Ken could remember. He still wasn't sure he was going to be able to say his peace without chickening out.  
  
"Omi?" Ken began, clearing his throat. "Will you, uh.step into the back of the store with me? There's some stuff we need to talk about."  
  
Omi looked at him quizzically, then smiled and nodded, trotting off to the back without so much as interrupting his song. He was still shaking his ass. Ken's first step behind him was met with a thundering roar of applause. He shook his head in disgust and followed Omi to the back. Sometimes he wondered why those girls didn't just go to the zoo and watch the monkeys hump.  
  
**** "Okay Ken, what do you need to talk to me about?" Omi asked, his young voice crisp and vivacious.  
  
"I just.I have some things I need to say to you." Ken could hear his pulse pounding in his ears. Even though he'd rehearsed this speech, this whole scene, over and over again in his mind, he couldn't believe he was finally about to say it to person who was meant to hear it.  
  
"What about?" Omi's voice was shaky. By this point Ken was certain the younger boy knew something was up.  
  
"Well, it's just.well, I'm sure you know what the girls say about us." Ken began shakily.  
  
"Yeah," chimed Omi, smiling. "They think we're, er, what to girls call cute guys? Hotties?"  
  
"No, no. I mean what they say about you and me specifically."  
  
Ken suddenly became aware that he was not only staring at his feet, but blushing too.  
  
"Actually they never really talk to me about anything specific when it comes to you guys." Omi crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling as if in thought.  
  
Ken was getting a more than a little frustrated at this point. Omi's naivety wasn't making this any easier. He was hoping not to have to spell this out for him.  
  
"No Omi, I mean they talk about you and I doing.things..together. Yohji and Aya too. Often in small groups, sometimes all at once."  
  
Omi gave him a genuinely shocked look.  
  
"How do they know about the bowling team!?"  
  
Get out your tablets and your #2 pencils boys and girls, Ken thought bitterly, it's time for spelling.  
  
"Man-humping, Omi, man-humping!" As those words forced their way past his lips, something in Ken broke, and he exploded, complete with wild gesticulations. "Mutual dudity! Sausage fests! Spot the submarine! Lightsaber duels with Oh-big-one Kenobi!"  
  
"What the hell are you talking about?" Omi had retreated a few steps in the wake of Ken's conniption fit.  
  
Ken decided to use nice small words this time.  
  
"They. Think. We're. Gay."  
  
"But, but, but why?" Omi blundered, his mouth agape.  
  
"Probably because we're four grown men who live and work together in a flower shop," snarled Ken. "That doesn't exactly exude machismo."  
  
"Neither does actually using the word 'machismo'."  
  
Ken snatched Omi up by the collar, giving him a shake for good measure.  
  
"Don't make jokes, man. You're part of the problem here."  
  
Omi squirmed until Ken set him back down. He tried to look defiant but still came across as completely perplexed.  
  
"How am I making people think we're gay.?"  
  
"Okay, first of all, I'm your friend. You understand?" Ken and Omi nodded back at forth. "It's just. Well, I wear jeans and a t-shirt, all the time. Aya wears jeans and a t-shirt. Yohji wears.well, Yohji wears what Yohji wears. You.."  
  
"I what?"  
  
".look like a queer elf."  
  
Omi blinked.  
  
"You wear hot pants and a little leather vest. And not just every once in a while. You dress like this every single day. Where did you even get that many sets of those clothes?"  
  
"There was a sale."  
  
"You didn't used to dress like that," Ken continued, ignoring him. "You used to actually wear shirts sometimes. Then one day it's like you woke up and decided to pioneer the 'renaissance girly-man' style of dress. Did somebody tell you it was cool or something?"  
  
"Well some of the girls."  
  
"And for God's sake, if you're gonna' sing while we're working, don't sing 'Girl's Psychology'. I don't mind you're singing, I just hate hearing that song for hours on end. And don't shake your ass. Please. Hell, maybe you could even try to, I don't, grow some stubble so you don't look like you're eight. Maybe that's part of it too."  
  
"So what you're saying," Omi began slowly. "is that my vest and short shorts get to you?"  
  
"Yeah, you could say that." Ken agreed.  
  
"And you notice singing even when we're working in a crowded store?" Omi spoke slowly, and Ken could tell there were gears turning in his head.  
  
"I do, but like I said, I don't mind the singing, just the songs."  
  
"And on those rare instances when I decided its time to shake some tail, it really has you bothered?"  
  
"Jesus, yes. It drives me crazy."  
  
"You also put a lot of thought into stories about you and I doing, well, naughty stuff. Enough thought that you felt you had to talk to me about it."  
  
"It's something that's been on my mind for a while." Ken sighed. "It just seemed like something we should get out in the open."  
  
Omi nodded to himself.  
  
"Sounds like you have some sort of crush on me or something."  
  
Had anyone been listening closely enough, they could have heard Ken's soul scream. Sadly, Omi had already walked back into the front of the store, and Ken himself was lost in a catatonic stupor of sorts spawned of a potent combination of abject rage and fear for his sexuality, so the once- in-a-lifetime screaming soul fell upon deaf ears.  
  
"Hey Ken!" Omi called back from the front room.  
  
Ken barely noticed his own reply.  
  
"I'm locking my door at night from now on, so don't get any ideas." Omi laughed.  
  
Nope, it definitely wasn't one of those relaxing days. 


	2. Circumstantial Evidence

_Man_, Ken thought to himself, _ the__ whole talking to Omi thing pretty much sucked._

Their conversation had been bothering him all afternoon, particularly the unsatisfactory and vaguely creepy ending.  It was one thing for dozens of hormone-ridden schoolgirls to theorize about the backdoor shenanigans they thought were going on in the flower shop, but it was a whole other animal entirely to have such scandalous talk coming from the inside.  Even if it was joke.  

            Even if Ken hoped like hell it was a joke.

            Ken didn't really think that Omi was into kicking balls at his own team's goal, but he couldn't help thinking that his "Sounds like you've got a crush on me" comment had just a tiny hint of innuendo do it.

"No way," he finally said aloud.  "Omi's not gay.  And neither am I."  Something told him that he'd said that a little too loud.  

Ken had been locked in his room ever since the shop closed because, damn it, he had succeeded in giving himself a colossal case of the creeps by the end of the day.  Omi's  insinuation that he was playing for the pink team had been rattling around in his brain for hours on end, and by the time the day was over he was in desperate need of some time in the Chamber of Masculinity.  Being surrounded by motorcycle magazines, J-League paraphernalia, and a not inconsiderable amount of questionably clad young women represented in every recording format known to man was comforting to the ol' ego.

            Somewhere in the course of the afternoon he had even decided to order the upcoming PRIDE event.  Even though competitive martial arts was a sport which he usually followed only casually, he acknowledged it to be pretty damned manly and that was exactly what he needed right now.  

The event had been on for nearly an hour now, but Ken hadn't been paying all that much attention to it.  He'd actually just been sitting on his bed in a pile of magazines of either the smutty or sporting varieties, eyes glazed over but pointed generally at the TV, lost in some sort of nirvana centered around the male id.  Nudity, sports, and violence poured into his senses, osmosizing into his wounded identity slowly but surely, even though he was dimly aware that osmosizing isn't a word.  Gradually he began to sense that he was burning inside and out, that some sort of startling change was taken place within him, either on a chemical or, if one wished to indulge in the New Age, psychic level.  He felt flushed, his body blazing as he inched closer to some incredible revelation.

Then he realized the air conditioner had gone out again.

            Ken's air conditioner, a second hand window unit that for some reason exuded air that smelled vaguely of cheese, had been uncooperative for the past couple of months.  He had a sneaking suspicion that it had to do with a power outage from around the same time which had also seen fit to claim the lives of the fridge, the fax machine, and half the settings on the microwave.  Despite several attempts to repair it, the thing seemed to operate only in short spurts and even then under protest.

Normally he'd have just opened his door and let the air from the hallway circulate in, but that didn't seem like a good idea tonight.  First of all, his bed with covered with a vast collection of pornography and three years worth of _Sports Illustrated Japan, a combination that only Yohji would possibly condone.  Secondly, Omi might come by and…look at him or something._

After a brief internal debate in which Practicality, Laziness, and Apathy teamed up with Rationalization to overcome a potential filibuster by Common Sense and his buddy Dignity, a simple yet effective course of action became readily apparent.  Ken stripped down to his bare ass and went on about his business.  

There was something to be said for Naked Time, a commodity which Ken vaguely figured women somehow got to indulge in more than men.  Swayin' in the breeze had its comfortable side, provided one remembered to keep away from vinyl and/or leather surfaces, plus it always made him feel like he was getting away with something.

_Besides_, he thought_, this is how the cavemen did it, and cavemen were real men.  Those bastards ate dirt, wrestled bears, and wiped their asses with gravel.  One step closer to cavemen is one step closer to macho._

            Ken's ruminations on cavemen were cut short when he caught a glimpse of the clock and realized how late it was.  He hurriedly gathered up his magazines and stuffed them under the bed, then, using his ultimate caveman grunt to accentuate the sheer manliness of it, leapt over the bed and flicked off the light.  Although it wouldn't seem like it at first glance, the flick was really damned manly too.

            He was just about to turn off the TV when the PRIDE announcer informed him that the main event was about to commence.  The famous pro wrestler Nobuhiko Takada was about to face an old rival in Kiyoshi Tamura.  Takada wasn't that great of a legitimate fighter, but Ken had been a big fan when was growing up, so he just had to watch this one.  Plus he distantly remembered that Tamura had been a foil to Takada back in pro wrestling, so he figured it would be interesting to see them go toe to toe for real.

            He sat back down on the edge of the bed and lost himself in the fight.  Takada and Tamura actually seem pretty evenly matched.  The first round was blur of takedown attempts by Tamura, punctuated by Nobuhiko Takada's famous kicks.  There was something unquestionably exciting about watching his childhood hero lock up with an old nemesis in mortal combat.  The two men grappled and wheeled, throwing punches and kicks in rapid succession.  Just as the battle began to reach a near impossible level of fury, the bell rang and the round ended.  Ken watched with clenched fists, laboring through the instant replays as the break between rounds inched by.  Finally the announcer called for the trainers to leave the ring and the match commenced once more.

            The two combatants squared off for what seemed like forever.  Something in Ken's heart told him that the next move would probably be the last.  Ken's fingernails bit deeply into his palm as he psychically channeled all of his energy into Nobuhiko Takada, trying to push him to victory through sheer force of will.  Sure enough, Takada sprang forward like a hungry lion  moving in to finish off a wounded dikdik.  Only in this case the lion would have impaled itself on a jaw-shattering right straight from the dikdik and gone down like a sack of dirty laundry.  In a matter of seconds the referee was pulling Kiyoshi Tamura away from the defeated, possibly slain, Takada and holding his hand in victory.

_Son of a bitch_, Ken thought, lowering his head in defeat.  What he saw next made his stomach twist in horror, his eyes bulging from their sockets in abject terror and revulsion.  His flag was flying at full staff.  His mind reeled as the circumstances all fell into place, all rushing towards the inevitable realization that was sitting in bed, naked as a jay, watching musculature men crawl on each other…and he had chub.  

Chub.  The word echoed in his mind. Naked.  Chub.  Lights off.  Chub.  Men in Speedos. Chub.  It suddenly dawned on him that he was concentrating on chub.  Not only that, but somehow his hand and slipped and now he was _touching it.  Something already frayed in his mind finally snapped.  Crazily he remembered his caveman train of thought and angrily tried to dismiss it._

_Cavemen?__  Fuck cavemen, he thought bitterly before his eyes widened in renewed anguish.  __Holy shit, I just thought about fucking cavemen!_

*****

            Of everyone in the flower shop, only Aya, who was prowling the kitchen in search of Pop-tarts, was awake to hear it.  By his estimation, the scream reverberated through the building for at least a good five seconds, echoing through the halls and, he later swore on his honor during several retellings of the tale, visibly flexing the kitchen windows.  Noting that his katana was upstairs and that it was mighty hard to feel brave in a bathrobe and "Azumanga Daioh" boxers, he didn't dare go see what was going on.


	3. Escalation

            Anguish wasn't a word that often found its way into Ken's vocabulary.  It was, however, the best possible term he could think of to describe the feelings he had endured after the boner-popping-while-watching-men incident, something which had haunted his every waking moment for the better part of two days.  It wasn't so much the latent homosexuality of the situation (okay, not so latent), it was more the feeling that his dong had betrayed him.  A guy and his dong were supposed to look out for each other, they were supposed to be best pals.  They most certainly _weren't_ supposed to mess with each other's minds.  And that, he wholeheartedly and bitterly believed, was exactly what had happened.  

            The experience had so traumatized that he had spent most of Monday locked in his room, venturing out on Tuesday only after Yohji had climbed onto the roof, run a hose down the central heating air return  connected to his room, and flatly threatened to flood him out if he didn't come to work.  This tactic worked surprisingly well, after only a few inches of water had been pumped into Ken's room, most of which was absorbed by a certain throw rug which was now four times it original proportions.

            The day at work had been, to say the least, nightmarish.  The usual horrors of  the flower shop were not only in place but seemed hideously magnified by the previous weekend's tribulations.  To make matters worse, although he had complied with Ken's request to impose a moratorium on Morning Musume songs, Omi had spent the better part of the day not only singing but actively grooving to Human Leagues "Obsession", a vaguely creepy American song from the 1980s which, in a coincidence which must have been orchestrated by Beelzebub himself, Ken understood every single word of.  Only slightly more terrifying than Omi's ability to sing a four minute and forty-nine second song without a single break for the entirety of an eight hour work day was the fact that for most of this time he was the end of the hose as an imaginary and decidedly Freudian microphone.

            He had not actually spoken to Omi sense their fated conversation several days ago, and in fact had been actively avoiding so much as even looking at him unless it was absolutely necessary.  While this held several advantages, not the least of which being that he ran essentially no risk of accidentally catching a glimpse of Omi's wiggling hindquarters, it also posed a problem in that he was unable to keep adequate track of his potential nemesis.  This pitfall in Ken's strategy was most vividly illustrated when he was caught completely off guard by a nearly staggering blow to his own ass that was immediately punctuated by a cheerful cry of "booty bump".  From that point forward Ken had spent the remainder of the day carrying a chrome-finished watering can as a sort of rear-view mirror, figuring somewhere deep in the back of his mind that Omi's butt was not unlike Medusa:  It's dangerous effects could be avoided  so long as one didn't view it _directly_.

            When the purgatory of work had finally ended, Ken felt as if his brain had spent the day in dozens of tiny cuisinarts being randomly switched between "puree" and "liquefy" by dozens of equally tiny imps.  He had retreated once more to his room, though this was short-lived, as he realized that he hadn't eaten for four days out of fear of encountering Omi on his way to the kitchen.  He sucked down his fear, mentally chastising himself for thinking the term "sucked" and crept slowly down to the kitchen, wherein he cooked himself enough straight-from-the-package ramen to guarantee himself a heart attack, possibly within the hour.  

            He had cunningly made his way to the living room, a zone which was supposed to be free of food by mutual agreement, based primarily upon an astronomically high security deposit and a white carpet.  While he was risking censure from his comrades for eating a forbidden zone, he also figured he was far less likely to be interrupted, and had in fact dared to hope that he not only eat but also sneak back to his lair without interacting with anyone.

            Those dreams had been shattered, however, and Ken now found himself in a bizarre and terrible situation which had previously been the stuff of nightmares.  Omi was standing behind him.  With his dong on his shoulder.  Though the desire for self preservation prevented him for looking over,  Ken knew it was Omi's dong, for both of Omi's hands were playing the drum line from "Obsession" on his head.  Beyond that, the only part of the human body that feels like a dong is the dong itself.  

            Fight or flight is said to be the most basic choice which the human brain is designed to make, a holdover from man's days as a tiny, tree-dwelling rodent-like beast which in all probability only survived by doing a hell of a lot more of the latter than the former.  Fight or flight, anthropologists say, is the decision we all make when we encounter a situation so dangerous that no other courses of action are possible.  Ken, however, was stunned beyond all capacity for reaching a quick fight or flight decision, his sense having been shocked into ineptitude by the sheer terror he was feeling.  The dong had been on his shoulder, blessedly being held at bay by his shirt, for a good five seconds now, and Ken sat as motionless as a bird in the thrall of a small, fleshy snake.

            He had briefly entertained the idea of simply ignoring it, hoping it would go away if he simply didn't react.  Under the law, however, silence is consent and the last thing he wanted was to prove himself queer in a legal sense after so much circumstantial evidence had been mounting.  

            Ken winced as the word "mounting" made its way through his brain.   

            Before his days in the J-League, Ken had briefly entertained the idea of going into politics.  Among his other studies was course on national security which also included some discussions of American policy.  One of the few things Ken remembered from this was something called the Powell Doctrine, named for then-secretary of state Colin Powell.  Formulated from Powell's experiences in the Vietnam War, two of the doctrine's key points were the application of sufficient force to end a threat with no gradual escalation and the formulation and use of a clearly defined exit strategy.  

            Ken believed in the Powell Doctrine.  Glancing at his bowl of soup, he suddenly understood both his capacity for force and his exit strategy.   

With a blur of motion, Ken drove his fork through the offending dong, and attack so fast and unexpected that Omi squealed like a little girl and fell backwards.  Ken was on his feet in a flash, his years of soccer culminating in what must have been the fastest and most perfect dash up a flight of stairs in history.

Only when he was locked securely in his room did he notice that the weight on his shoulder had not been lifted.  With queasy horror he realized that there was now a severed dong attached to his body.  He slowly made his way to the mirror to remove the surely grotesque member from himself, though he could barely find it in himself to take a close look.  Biting his lip, he reached up to pull the broken skin flute away, but found that it was shaped differently from all the other decapitated trouser serpents he had seen.  Further inspection revealed that the dong in question was in fact the remains of a hot dog.  While being a hot dog didn't necessarily mean that the thing on his shoulder wasn't at least partly a dong, a wave of relief washed over him.  This was a trick he had fallen for once in high school as well, and he had to grudgingly admit it was kind of funny.    

Then he remembered the force with which he had driven the fork through his enemy.  One small tear made its way down his cheek as the red stains finally began to blossom on his shirt.

*****

            Ken wasn't as embarrassed that he had to ask Yohji to drive him to the hospital as he was that Yohji wasn't the least bit above telling every nurse in the building exactly why his idiot friend was getting ten stitches in his shoulder.


	4. The Dangers of Transparency in a World o...

Found scrawled in a notebook on the desk of Ken Hidaka and posted with glee on the fridge by an unscrupulous person or persons who have yet to be identified but  for whom vengeance approaches on swift black wings….

_It pains me that the schoolgirls say_

_That me and Omi are both gay.___

_I just don't get what's so appealing,_

_'Bout the thought of two men feeling_

_Each other's dongs and other things,_

_And doing stuff that prob'ly stings_

_Without the proper lubrication_

_Of parts designed for defecation._

_I mean I guess there's nothing wrong_

_With guys that like each other's dongs._

_But what do girls find fascinating_

_'Nough to send them masturbating_

_Like bonobo apes in heat,_

_'Bout me and Omi 'neath the sheets?___

_I still don't know who starts the rumors_

_That spread faster than a colon tumor_

_That we have lots of paraphernalia_

_Relating to male genitalia.___

_I mean I have a wiener, sure_

_But for that there is no cure_

_Except for things that aren't so nice_

_And would involve a kitchen knife._

_I don't like ass,  or balls, or cock_

_Or other stuff I would think rock_

_If I were into other men_

_Because I'm not, I've never been_

_A fan anal penetration.___

_I must stop the wild dissemination_

_Of the crazy schoolgirl propaganda_

_That exists throughout the fandom_

_Of our little flower shop.___

_I'm telling you, it has to stop._

_Just because we share a house_

_It doesn't mean we like to dowse,_

_Ourselves with lukewarm cocoa butter,_

_The way the creepy schoolgirls mutter_

_And then strip down to nakedness_

_To touch each other's manly bits.___

_I think the fact that's lost them _

_Is that I'm not into doing men._

_A fact that I've set out to prove_

_By locking myself in my room_

_And watching porn for three straight days.___

_Straight, of course, since I'm not gay.___

_The first, of course, "Hot Buttered Elves"_

_And then "How Women Love Themselves"_

_And other films of ribald nature_

_With vaguely naughty nomenclature.___

_But alas, I've been maligned_

_By roommates who are unaligned_

_In my fight for perfect straightness_

_And would undermine the greatness_

_Of my swanky porn collection,_

_With flawless scripts and great direction.___

_For they've replaced the classic "Throb"_

_With a film called "Bob Me, Bob."_

_-Fin-_


End file.
